Council forks out £160m: The last of the schools deal cash

Last BSF dosh doled out to construction and ICT supplier

Common Topics

A north-west council has awarded one of the last contracts under the BSF school building programme. The contract includes ICT services.

Halton Borough Council has awarded a 15-year Building Schools for the Future (BSF) contract to HTP LEP for work including computer-related services and the installation of telecommunications equipment. The deal is on behalf of the council and other organisations.

According to a notice published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 22 April, a large part of the deal will include facilities-management services and construction work. The ICT element of the deal will require ICT equipment systems and services to be designed, implemented, serviced and maintained "to provide a fully integrated service across all or any of the relevant facilities and services".

The Coalition government stopped the establishment of new BSF deals, although it allowed those already in the pipeline to go ahead, including that of Halton Council with HTP LEP.

In a notice published on the same day as the Halton deal, Staffordshire county council awarded RM an education-related contract worth £4.4m for the provision of e-learning platform services. The one-year contract aims to support individual learners in schools and colleges.

"The development of a learning platform must be part of a planned strategy to embed ICT and e-learning in schools culture," says the notice.

Guardian Government Computing is a business division of Guardian Professional, and covers the latest news and analysis of public sector technology. For updates on public sector IT, join the Government Computing Network here.